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Birdwatch: a Bigger Beta

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Birdwatch: a Bigger Beta

"mo money, mo problems" - the Notorious B.I.G.

Alex Power
Sep 7, 2022
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Birdwatch: a Bigger Beta

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News from Birdwatch:

Twitter avatar for @birdwatch
Birdwatch @birdwatch
Buckle up! We have a handful of exciting new updates to share with y’all: - Research on the impact Birdwatch is having - A new system to keep contribution quality high - Enrolling more contributors - Expanding the visibility of notes on Twitter https://t.co/RO2Ut9Fse1 🧵
4:09 PM ∙ Sep 7, 2022
43Likes14Retweets

The headline change is a two-phase onboarding process. Contributors must correctly

1
rate five Birdwatch comments
2
before they can write new ones.

Also, Birdwatch comments will become visible to more participants who do not have editing permissions (50% of all USA users). We will find out how that turns out soon.

Static Diffusion draws a blue bird in a nest

Throughout the United States

The Birdwatch beta currently requires a verified phone number from a USA-based carrier.

This is a good short-term strategic decision, as “expanding the project to other languages and geographies” will be a major undertaking. A cautionary tale here is the story of the ideological capture of the Croatian-language Wikipedia.

De Minimis Non Curat Lex

when does a Tweet become prominent enough to justify a response?

Consider a hypothetical tweet from an account with zero followers: “Ralph Nader won the 2000 presidential election! Don’t believe the lies!”

Is it really worth putting that in the review queue?

Either through “over-enthusiastic reviewer searches for obviously false tweets” or “good-hand/bad-hand self-promotion”, it is likely that a tweet like that will show up at some point. This one (account has 176 followers) is close:

Twitter avatar for @Ebbie228228
Ebbie @Ebbie228228
This is where her political stance is. Don’t let people forget her views.
Image
8:35 PM ∙ Sep 4, 2022
181Likes189Retweets

Of course the screenshot is fake. That’s not really the point …

Occupy the Mindspace

Token

3
liberal-disinformation outlet "Occupy Democrats" shows up on Birdwatch quite frequently
4
.

Twitter avatar for @OccupyDemocrats
Occupy Democrats @OccupyDemocrats
BREAKING: MAGA Senate candidate Dr. Oz says that it's "fine" and "not a big problem" to have sex with a blood relative as long as they're not a first cousin or closer — which is almost as bad as what Donald Trump says about Ivanka. RT IF YOU THINK THAT THESE PEOPLE ARE SICK!
11:17 PM ∙ Sep 6, 2022
1,440Likes646Retweets

The double-negatives make it difficult to entangle what is being said

5
here, or what Dr. Oz actually said, or when it was said. It’s not a good tweet.

But is a piecemeal approach to Occupy Democrats really going to improve the discourse? Or does it just amplify their ideological agenda?

Le déluge (The Flood)

The only problem worse than “not having enough people participating in Birdwatch” is “too many people participating in Birdwatch”:

Twitter avatar for @HillaryClinton
Hillary Clinton @HillaryClinton
I can’t believe we’re still talking about this, but my emails… As Trump’s problems continue to mount, the right is trying to make this about me again. There’s even a “Clinton Standard." The fact is that I had zero emails that were classified.
2:54 PM ∙ Sep 6, 2022
218,070Likes46,998Retweets

There are, as of when this was written, nine different Birdwatch comments. One of them uses the neologism TFG

6
without context. Another is sourced to a website that makes dubious claims. Most of the others are fairly similar.

The review option “correct, but a different note is better” does not appear to be available in any form yet. Perhaps it will show up

7
soon.

You can’t fact-check a fish

Some tweets are, on their face, pure opinion.

Twitter avatar for @WalzFailed
Walz Failed @WalzFailed
Tim Walz's Report Card Safety: F Education: F Seniors: F Minnesotans are ready to tell the Governor: You're fired.
Image
12:49 AM ∙ Sep 7, 2022
208Likes64Retweets

The “report card” is obviously an advertising gimmick. It doesn’t need a Birdwatch note

8
to say that.

But, clearly, people will continue to do so. (They will also continue to reply to tweets like this in the normal way, which is a different conversation.)

Other Coverage: Gizmodo, TechCrunch

1

It is difficult to define what it means to “correctly” rate a Birdwatch comment. If it were easy, there wouldn’t need to be a massive project to determine which comments are correct. Furthermore, if the same few questions are always used, the onboarding process becomes a game … that it is easy to cheat at.

2

Is “comments” the correct word to describe Birdwatch entries?

3

Something like 90% of accounts that delibrately blur the truth to make a political point are Republican-aligned. Occupy Democrats is a taste of what it looks like when Democrats do it.

4

I don’t have many thoughts for public consumption on “managing the stigma of being reviewed by Birdwatch”. There shouldn’t be no stigma, but there also shouldn’t be as much stigma as an unmanaged system would create.

5

What is being said is that, as far as genetic abnormalities are concerned, you are fine to reproduce with your second cousin.

6

I believe TFG = “The Former Guy”, aka Donald J. Trump.

7

There also isn’t an option for “Twitter, but anyone who insists on still talking about Hillary Clinton’s emails is shadowbanned”. But that’s a different department.

8

There is an argument that, if Twitter knows what the genre of the tweet is, it might as well say it. But between the “stigma of being corrected by Birdwatch” and the “overhead/promotion of sending tweets to the Birdwatch queue”, it’s not helpful here.

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